Front matter (continued 2)

There are so many kinds of sausages that it is difficult to pitch upon the best for Chafing purposes. Slices of the Brunswick species are excellent in pea-soup. The genuine liver sausage makes good sandwiches. The more elaborate French kinds are akin to galantine. The Italian Bologna and Mortadella have their friends. But, after all, the well-made Cambridge sausage is hard to beat. I plump for the Cambridge variety.

Hodge’s Sausages.

This is a Cambridge recipe for Hodge’s Sausages. Put as many as you think you can eat in the dish with a walnut of butter for every two, pepper and salt, and a tablespoon of Worcester sauce. Then add one sliced apple for each sausage. Take out the cores, but do not peel them. Stab the sausages with a fork to prevent their bursting. Cook for twelve minutes. American apples are good for this dish, and also the homegrown Keswick Codlin, Blenheim Orange, or Hambledon Deux Ans.

There is something peculiarly bucolic about Hodge’s Sausages which may commend itself to the rurally minded. To me, it brings the scent of the hay over the spirit-lamp.

Goulasch.

Another appetising stew is Goulasch. Beat well a half-pound (or larger) steak; cut it into pieces the size of a domino. Put them in the Chafing Dish with two cold cooked potatoes chopped into dice. Pour over the meat and the vegetables two tablespoons of olive oil, and as soon as it simmers add an onion in slices, half a teaspoon of Paprika, salt, and a cupful of bouillon. Cover it up, and let it cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Just before serving drop in half a dozen stoned olives.

So much for beef. The next meat is of course mutton, for which three recipes should suffice. The first is Mutton Steaks, and is adapted from a Welsh recipe. I have a very interesting Welsh cookery book, tersely entitled: “Llyfr Cogino a Chadw ty: yn cynwys Pa fodd? A Paham? Cogyddiaeth.” I am sorry that ignorance prevents my giving anything out of it, but I think that I have got the title nearly right.

Mutton Steaks.

To make Mutton Steaks, cut three slices, each an inch thick, from the middle of a cold cooked leg of mutton. Put them in the Dish with enough water to cover them, pepper and salt, and five small onions. Cover it up and let the meat brown thoroughly on one side, then turn it over and add a walnut of butter and a tablespoon of flour. Do not allow it to boil, but keep it simmering gently for at least fifteen minutes. If raw meat be used, the result is also quite satisfactory, but it is well in that case to replace the water by a cup of bouillon.

Turkish Mutton.

Turkish Mutton, locally termed Etena Jarvat: this is one of those dishes which may fairly be included in Brillat-Savarin’s magistères restoratifs. It is easy enough to chafe.

Cut half a pound of uncooked mutton (from the leg from choice, but not absolutely necessary) into medium dice. Put the meat into the Chafing Dish with salt, pepper and dripping, fat, oil, or butter, according to taste, but oil is preferable. When the meat turns brown, add half a pound of previously cooked and sliced French beans, also half a pint of water or bouillon (latter for choice) and a bunch of simples, either thyme or marjoram, or both. Simmer steadily for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. Carrots can be used instead of beans. Just before serving turn up the flame full, and let it come just to the boil.

Mutton Venison.

Mutton Venison is a compromise, and may be recommended as such. We live in an age of compromise, so why not bring it into our cookery? Make an extra strong decoction of bouillon from any good meat-juice, three tablespoons in quantity, mince into it an onion, and put in the pan with a tablespoonful of Worcester sauce, three drops of Tabasco, a glass of claret, a dessert-spoon of red-currant jelly (or guava or blackberry jelly), pepper and salt. When very hot put in about a pound of slices of cold cooked leg of mutton, lean, cut into strips. Let it simmer for twenty minutes. It is not a bit like venison, but distinctly good nevertheless.

Plump and Wallop.

This advertisement, it is alleged, was addressed to the good people of Kirkmahoe, who were so poor that they could not afford to put any meat into their broth. A cobbler invested all his money in buying four sheep shanks, and when a neighbour wanted to make mutton broth, for the payment of one halfpenny the cobbler would “plump” one of the sheep shanks into the boiling water and give it a “wallop,” or whisk round. He then wrapped it in a cabbage leaf and took it home. This was called a “gustin bone,” and was supposed to give a rich “gust” to the broth.

Potatoes and Point.

A Boer recipe of much the same description was known in early Transvaal days (long before the War) as “Potatoes and Point.” The poor “Bijwoner” family was served all round with potatoes, and a red herring was hung up in the middle of the room. The elders were allowed to rub their potatoes on the herring, but the youngsters might only point theirs towards the delicacy at the end of a fork. The mere proximity of the highly-flavoured herring was supposed to give the potato a flavour.

Lots of quite worthy folk gorge themselves periodically and keep their children on the border-line of starvation. A certain exaggeratedly selfish family man of my acquaintance, who for economic reasons lived somewhere in the wilds of West Kensington, made it his unholy practice to dine once a month with a couple of boon companions of the same sex at the Carlton or Prince’s, and at the conclusion of a remarkable dinner was wont to blurt out: “By George, I wish I could afford to bring the wife and children here!”

Scouse.

Permit me now to suggest a trial of that very old and famous dish, Scouse. It is prepared in the following fashion: Get one pound of lean, dairy-fed pork, cooked and cold. Cut it into half-inch squares; sprinkle them with flour, salt, Paprika, and dip them lightly in French mustard. Put in the Chafing Dish three chopped onions, half a teaspoon of sugar, one wine-glass of vinegar, three cloves, a blade of mace and a bayleaf. Cover up and let it simmer, not boil, while the quantity of liquid is reduced by one half. Add the pork with half a pint of bouillon, and simmer for another ten minutes.

Young pork, like young veal, is always excellent, but it can be too young. A sucking pig with lacklustre eye and a lemon in its jaws is pathetic and none too appetising. Veal, in England at any rate, is often tasteless and somewhat dull. Not so very long ago, in Ireland, they used to kill newborn calves, bake them in an oven with potatoes, and call the dish “Staggering Bob.”

Kabobs.

Kabobs have probably come to us from India, via the Cape. This is an old Capetown-Malay recipe which is thoroughly reliable. Half a pound of cold veal; the same of lean ham, both cut into slices a quarter of an inch thick; three apples, and three onions. Cut the meat and the vegetables into rounds with a knife or cutter, about the size of a crown piece. Skewer them up on wooden (or, if you are a de Beers shareholder, on silver) skewers, in the following order: (1) a round of veal; (2) a round of apple; (3) a round of ham; (4) around of onion. Sprinkle them with pepper, salt and curry-powder. Put them in the Chafing Dish with a teacupful of bouillon and a walnut of butter; simmer steadily for twenty minutes, then thicken the gravy with a little flour, and serve either with boiled rice, or toast, or both.

Brigands’ Fowls.

Cold fowls lend themselves in a hundred ways to the kind attentions of Chaffinda. Mention of quite a few of these must urge the gastronomer to further experiments and discoveries. Pollio à la Contrabandista: this is the way brigands cook, or ought to cook, fowls. Cut a cold cooked fowl into neat joints. Put them into the Chafing Dish with four tablespoons of olive oil, and heat up until the meat is of a light brown colour, turning the pieces frequently. Then keep the flame lower and simmering all the time; add four tomatoes cut into quarters, two chopped green chillies, one shredded Spanish onion, one tablespoon of Worcester sauce, the same of mushroom ketchup, and four cloves. Let it simmer, closely covered, for at least fifteen minutes. It will then prove a most savoury mess.

Howtowdie.

From Spain to Bonnie Scotland! This is how to cook Howtowdie. Cut up a young fowl into handy joints. Put them into the Chafing Dish with two walnuts of butter, a cupful of bouillon, three sprigs of parsley, three small onions, salt and pepper. Simmer continuously until the bird is tender. When half cooked add another cupful of bouillon to make up for evaporation. When quite cooked put the fowl on to a hot dish, surround it with poached eggs, then thicken the gravy in the pan with a tablespoon of flour and a tablespoon of Worcester sauce; give it a smart boil up and pour it over the fowl. This Howtowdie is adapted from an excellent recipe in “The Scottish Cookery Book containing guid plain rules for makin’ guid plain meats suitable for sma’ purses, big families, and Scotch stomachs.”

Roman Fowl.

The preparation of Roman Fowl is simplicity itself. Pour four tablespoons of olive oil into the Chafing Dish with a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of Paprika, three cloves, and herbs to taste, but do not overdo the herbs. When the oil is sizzling put in all the limbs of a lightly boiled chicken, cut up. Cook it slowly, turning the meat so that all the flesh is equally cooked all over. When done it should be a delicate brown. Add half a cupful of tomato sauce and the same of bouillon, also three shredded onions. Simmer for eight minutes, then serve.

Creamed Chicken.

This is an American recipe, copied verbatim from an American Chafing-Dish cookery book. Two cups cold chicken cut into small pieces, one cup chicken stock, one cup milk or cream, two tablespoonfuls of butter, one heaping tablespoonful of flour, salt and pepper. Cook the butter and the flour together in the Chafing Dish; add the stock and milk and stir until smooth; put in the chicken, salt and pepper, and cook three minutes longer.

Other times, other manners. Contrast with the severe simplicity of the above the sort of thing that gratified the palates of our forebears. In the fourteenth century, Sacchetti says, a baked goose stuffed with garlic and quinces was esteemed an excellent dish in Italy, and when the Gonfalonier of Florence entertained a famous doctor he gave him the stomach of a calf, boiled partridges, and pickled sardines.

Old Samuel Pepys, too, had a nice taste in food as in music, and other things. His idea of “a fine dinner” was to this effect: “A dish of marrowbones, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, a dish of fowl; three pullets and a dozen of larks, all in a dish; a great tart, a neat’s tongue, a dish of anchovies, a dish of prawns, and cheese.”

For those who are curious in such things it is easy to find quaint recipes in old books. For instance, if you want to know how to bake a hedgehog in clay—and very good it is too—you have only to read Albert Smith’s “Christopher Tadpole” and you will know all about it. It is truly said that comparatively few people read Disraeli’s novels nowadays, but those who are culinarily inclined would do well to turn to the opening chapter of “Tancred,” where there is a delightful conversation between a grand old maître de bouche, “Papa Prevost,” and his pupil, the eminent chef, Leander. The pompous spirit of the culinary artist is delightfully caught and the gastronomic jargon wonderfully reproduced.

But gastronomy has never lacked its historians. Great painters have come to its aid, as witness the glowing canvases of Snyders, Teniers, Jordaens, Ruysdael, Jan Weenix, Melchior de Hondecoeter and Jan Fyt. Their pictures of still life, the poulterers’ shops, the heaped baskets of good cheer, the brilliant lobster, the callow lemon, the russet hare, and the lustrous plumage of the pheasant, have inspired the hand of the Masters, who must have appreciated all such culinary delicacies in order to have painted them with such loving-kindness.

Yesterday’s Pheasant.

Yesterday’s Pheasant can be made into a most tempting dish by cutting up the remains into convenient chunks, omitting the bones. Put one tablespoon of butter in the Dish, add a tablespoon of flour, and keep on stirring till the mixture is smooth and light brown. Add a glass of claret, a tablespoon of Worcester sauce, pepper and salt, and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Now put in the chunks of pheasant, and simmer for eight minutes. An excellent accompaniment to this is chestnut and celery salad.

Any game bird may be treated in like manner, save always the woodcock, that little epitome of all that is toothsome and delicate. A curious thing about the woodcock is its extraordinarily rapid digestion. A single bird has been known to consume in a night more earthworms than half filled a moderate-sized flowerpot.

Few people know the different expressions for flocks of birds. Here are some of them: a building of rooks, a bevy of quails, a watch of nightingales, a cast of hawks, a nide of pheasants, a muster of peacocks, a plump of wildfowl, a flock of geese, a pack of grouse, a chattering of choughs, a stand of plovers, and a wisp of snipe.

A woman I know had a very good cook, who was also a plain cook—or rather, a plain-spoken cook. She had been in the place many years, and much was forgiven her. The mistress, visiting the kitchen, inspected a turkey, and remarked that it was a very thin bird. “Just you wait, M’m, till I’ve stuffed it with chestnuts,” said the cook, “you won’t know it then. It’ll be quite another thing. Just like you, M’m, when you has your di’monds on.”

I do not advise the fabrication of elaborate entrées in the Chafing Dish. They can be and have been done, but I mistrust them and find ample scope for ingenuity, inventiveness, and novelty in the cates I have already described, without venturing into the fields of fancy. Vol-au-Vent, for instance, or Brains à la Poulette, or Spanish Cream Pudding are all within the range of feasibility, but I leave the recipes to those less timorous than myself. In fact, in this case, I am at one with the waiter in the “Bab Ballads” who hurled the most awful threat in culinary literature at his flighty sweetheart:

The good things of this life are mostly plain and wholesome (with a few delightful exceptions), and we can all qualify to live in Bengodi, Boccaccio’s country of content, where they tie up the vines with sausages, where you may buy a fat goose for a penny, and have the giblets thrown in into the bargain. In this place there is a mountain of Parmesan cheese, and the people’s employment is making cheese-cakes and macaroons. There is also a river which runs Malmsey wine of the very best quality.

There are no cheap excursions to Bengodi. We have to tramp there on foot—and earn our bread on the road as we travel thither.

CHAPTER·VI·VEGETABLES·AND·SALADS·

“Will a man give a penny to fill his belly with hay? Or can you persuade the turtle-dove to live upon carrion like the crow?” John Bunyan (“Pilgrim’s Progress”).

The first vegetarian was probably Nebuchadnezzar, and he has many followers. With the utmost love and respect for all vegetables, without exception, I refuse to accept them as the staff of life, or indeed as anything more than a delicious aid thereto. It is possible that the internal economy of certain very worthy folk may be more easily conducted on a vegetarian basis, and indeed every man is at liberty to feed as suits him best; but as a matter of preference, predilection and experience, I decline to follow his example. If they are content to let me go my way unmolested, I have no desire to interfere with their tastes. But no proselytising, please!

Here in England, although we shine in our roasts, our beef, our chops, and maybe a few other trifles, we are woefully and culpably ignorant of vegetable cookery. The average British cook has but one idea with vegetables. She cooks them in water, with lumps of coarse soda, which she thinks makes them soft and keeps their colour. As a matter of fact, this process, especially the soda, practically destroys their health-giving properties. Vegetables want the kindliest care, the most delicate handling, the most knowledgeable treatment. Otherwise they become mere parodies of their better selves. What could be more terrible, more depressing, than the usual slab of wet cabbage doled out at the average London restaurant? It is an insult to the cabbage, to the guest, and to the Art of Cookery. And it is so easy to cook it decently—even in a Chafing Dish.

Again, the average British household knows and uses only a very limited range of vegetables, ignoring, wilfully or otherwise, scores of edible delights, easily grown and easily cooked, but with the inbred laziness of crass conservatism, totally overlooked, because, forsooth, “the greengrocer does not keep it!” The greengrocer, on the other hand, scorns the inquirer after such strange green meats, because “they are never asked for”; and so, between the two, we are relegated to the same dull round of vegetable monotony.

Household cookery knows nothing of the Aubergine, or Egg-plant, of which there are fourteen edible varieties, most of which can easily be grown in this country, although the rich purple kinds are best suited to our climate. Then there is Salsify, which is amenable to a dozen different treatments; as the vegetable oyster it is duly honoured in America, but we know it not. The Good King Harry is only known in Lincolnshire. The leaves served as cabbage are excellent, and the tender young shoots are as delicate as asparagus. The Cardoon, Scornzonera, Celeriac, Chicory, Buck’s Horn, Chervil, Jew’s Mallow, Lovage, Purslane, Rampion, Scurvy-Grass and Valerian, are only a selection from a list thrice as long.

It is useless, however, to lift up one thin quavering voice of protest in a wilderness of deaf greengrocers. I must e’en deal with the common vegetables of commerce, others being unprocurable, and their cultivation a counsel of perfection.

One naturally begins with potatoes, though the reason of their position in the hierarchy of the garden is occult. Sir Walter Raleigh, good man and true, has much to answer for. Tobacco and potatoes! I believe it to be a fact that throughout the length and breadth of Ireland there is no memorial to Raleigh. This seems a distinct omission. But then, neither is there a statue to Lord Verulam!

Between the primitive tuber, baked in the ashes, and Pommes à la Réjane, there lies the whole gamut of culinary ingenuity. They are the extremes of sophistication and the opposite. But it must suffice here to give a few only of the simplest recipes, well within Chaffinda’s modest capability, and in their very ingenuousness fit alike for the delectation of Prince or Pauper.

Mary’s Potatoes.

The first method is called Mary’s Potatoes for want of a better name. Slice up half a dozen cold cooked potatoes. Put them in the Chafing Dish with a walnut of butter and a cupful of milk; let them simmer for five minutes, then add the juice of half a lemon, a teaspoon of chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes more.

Potato Uglies.

Cut up half a dozen cold cooked potatoes into quarter-inch slices. Put four slices of fat bacon into the Chafing Dish, and hot up until the fat begins to smoke; then drop in the potatoes, add pepper and salt, and cook for five minutes. Drain before serving.

Sala’s Potatoes.

Cut four potatoes in slices as large as a halfpenny, but twice as thick. Put two tablespoonsful of butter in the Chafing Dish, and a dozen delicate little onions cut into dice. Hot up the onions and butter till the former turn a golden brown, then add the potatoes and a teaspoon of chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. Keep stirring, and when the onions are deep yellow, which should be in about eight minutes, the dish is ready.

Fried Potatoes.

Boil half a dozen potatoes in their skins. Peel them when hot, cut them in quarters, roll them in bread-crumbs, and then fry them for seven minutes in two tablespoons of sizzling butter. Sprinkle chopped parsley on them before serving.

The tomato or love-apple is a perennial joy to the eye, whether cooked or uncooked, ripe or unripe. Its form and colour are alike exquisite, and its flavour altogether a thing apart. Our grandfathers knew little or nothing about it, apart from sauce, and it has been left to our generation fully to appreciate its possibilities. It is the more strange because it has been a staple article of food in mid and southern Europe since time immemorial. It has even been suggested that Eve’s apple, Paris’ apple, Nausicaa’s apple, and the apples of Hesperides were all really tomatoes! As pommes d’amour, pomi di mori, Liebesäpfel, Paradiesäpfel, or tomatoes, they are nowadays honoured and appreciated by all right lovers of the good things of the earth. They are both fruit and vegetable, and it is very difficult to spoil them in cooking. They are best of all when grilled as an accompaniment to chops (Mr. Pickwick, it will be remembered, enjoyed them in the form of sauce), but the following is a very simple and honest way of preparing them.

Fried Tomatoes.

Cut three tomatoes in halves. Pepper and salt them and coat the cut surfaces with bread-crumbs. Put two tablespoons of butter in the Chafing Dish, and when sizzling add the tomatoes and cook them thoroughly for eight minutes.

The Jerusalem artichoke should not be devoted solely to soup. It is an excellent adjunct to meats, and fully repays a little careful attention.

Fried Artichoke Chips.

Wash and peel the outer skin of a pound of artichokes, then with a very sharp knife peel them into ribbons (as one would peel an apple); then put them lightly in a cloth to dry. Hot up two tablespoons of olive oil in the Chafer to smoking-point. Put in the artichokes, letting them fry until they rustle when stirred with a fork. Pour off the oil and strain them. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Braised Artichokes.

Wash and peel a pound of artichokes and put them aside in a basin of cold water. Melt a walnut of butter in the Chafing Dish; add the artichokes after drying them well. Let them brown well in the butter; add pepper and salt and stir them frequently, letting them simmer for twelve minutes.

Spinach Purée.

Have your spinach thoroughly well washed in several waters till it is perfectly clean. Boil a pint of water in the Chafing Dish, salt it and put in the spinach. Boil it for ten minutes. Take out the spinach and strain it. Pour cold water over it to take away the bitter taste; strain again. Put a walnut of butter in the dish, add the spinach and half a cupful of milk. Mix up well with a wooden spoon. Heat for five minutes.

There are about twenty-five different kinds of edible mushrooms. The popular test of peeling is unreliable, because some poisonous mushrooms peel easily, and some harmless kinds do not. An authority on mushrooms (Mr. E. Kay Robinson) says: “If a mushroom of any kind which has been gathered from an open space is brittle and compact in texture, and not brightly coloured, nor peculiar in taste or unpleasant in smell, and neither exudes a milky juice when bruised, nor changes colour when exposed to the air, you may eat it without fear.”

Consequently, when you go mushroom-gathering you must bear in mind nearly as many things as when you address your ball on the tee. I always buy my mushrooms, and go to a good shop; then, I think, you are fairly safe.

The onion is a sure poison detector. Put an onion in a dish of mushrooms. If it does not change colour the mushrooms are all right. If it blushes black with shame at its contiguity, they are all wrong. A silver spoon acts in the same way and gets black in contact with toadstools or the like. Verily, evil communications corrupt good manners—even in onions.

Stewed Mushrooms.

Flood the Chafing Dish with really good olive oil. Put in a teaspoonful of Paprika and a pinch of salt. Drop in the mushrooms, after having stalked and peeled them, black part uppermost. Cover up, and listen to the appetising sizzling for seven minutes. They should then be done to a turn.

Mushrooms used to be dried, powdered, and used as a flavouring in the eighteenth century. Cook-books of that period speak of the condiment as “Cook’s Snuff.” The great and justly esteemed Grimod de la Reynière said that it ought always to be on the dining-table together with pepper and salt. Here is a hint for the modern purveyors of table delicacies.

In Sir Henry Layard’s Essay on “Renaissance Cookery,” he says: “Amongst vegetables, the thistle (Cardo) was esteemed a delicacy, and was generally served with fruit at the end of the dinner. The thorny thistles with well-grown white stalks are the best.” The Cardo includes the artichoke, but that the name was usually applied to the common thistle is shown by the quaint remark of Romoli in his “Singolare Dottrina,” that “it should not be eaten with milk, which it has the property of curdling, and consequently the process would take place in your stomach, but it should be eaten with pepper, which does not generate wind, and clears the liver; and such is the reason why donkeys, who eat largely of this, have better stomachs than men.”

Dr. Thudichum, an eminent authority on dietetics, does not agree with these conclusions, which are nevertheless illuminating, and do not detract from the merits of the nettle as a food-stuff.

Welsh Leeks.

Boil half a dozen leeks in a pint of water. Drain them well, and cut each leek into two-inch lengths; squeeze a lemon over them, pepper and salt them well. Set them aside. Make half a dozen croûtons of toast and put the leeks on them. Replace them in the Chafing Dish, pouring over each croûton a liberal dose of Sauce Robert. Heat up and serve on a very hot plate. Sauce Robert (Escoffier brand) can be bought ready made at the Stores.

French Beans.

Boil a pound of shredded beans till tender, and then drain them well. Melt two tablespoons of butter in the Chafing Dish and stir into it a small dessert-spoon of flour. Keep these simmering, and shake them about till they are lightly browned; add salt and pepper and a cup of milk. Just before serving, add the yolks of two eggs, slightly beaten, and a squeeze of lemon. Stir all up thoroughly and beat up to just below boiling-point.

Broad Beans.

Shell and wash in cold water one pint of broad beans. Put them in the Chafing Dish and boil them with a sprinkling of salt; when nearly soft strain them, and then replace them in the dish with a tumbler of bouillon, a little chopped parsley, and a lump of sugar. Cook them slowly until they are quite tender. Beat up the yolk of an egg and a wine-glass of milk; add both to the beans with pepper and salt, and beat up thoroughly to just below boiling-point.

Italian Broad Beans.

Shell a pint of fresh young broad beans and put them aside in a dish of cold water. Fill the Chafing Dish with nearly two pints of water, add a thick slice of cooked ham, a stick of celery, a bunch of parsley, three cloves, twenty peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Boil all this for seven minutes, then remove the ham, vegetables, and spices, and put in the beans. When they are quite tender, take them out, strain them, put them back in the dish; add a tablespoon of butter, and hot them up again for three or four minutes before serving.

Brussels Sprouts.

Place a pint of small Brussels sprouts in the Chafing Dish with two pints of boiling water, slightly salted. Boil for ten minutes; take out the sprouts, drain them and put them aside to keep hot. Then make the following sauce in the Chafing Dish. Two tablespoons of butter melted, one tablespoon flour, pepper and salt, and sufficient bouillon to make the mixture of the consistency of thick cream. Heat this to boiling, stirring it well. Just before serving, add the juice of a whole lemon. Pour the sauce over the hot sprouts, and serve very quickly.

Both this and the previous recipe are adapted from a most excellent book on the cooking of vegetables: “Leaves from our Tuscan Garden,” by Janet Ross.

Haricot Beans.

Put a pint of young green shelled haricot beans into the Chafing Dish with two pints of boiling water. When half cooked add salt and pepper and a tablespoon of butter. Take out the beans, drain them, and replace them in the dish with another tablespoon of butter, a little chopped parsley, more salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon. Toss them about well in the Chafing Dish and hot up for eight minutes.

Fried Parsley.

Indispensable for flavourings. Wash the parsley thoroughly, pick off the stalks, leaving the large heads. Dry it very carefully as, if it is left at all damp, it will never become crisp. Put the parsley in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of olive oil or butter. As soon as the oil or butter ceases bubbling, take out the parsley and let it dry on a piece of paper. The parsley should remain quite green; if it is brownish it is a sign that it has been fried too long.

Green Peas.

A pint of shelled peas, a tablespoon of butter, pepper and salt, and a good squeeze of lemon; put all these in the Chafing Dish. Add a cupful of milk and hot up for ten minutes, then strain and serve. Avoid mint, green or otherwise.

Chestnuts.

Shell a score of chestnuts, cover them in the Chafing Dish with boiling water, and in four minutes take them out and remove the skins. Return them to the boiling water, add a cup of milk, pepper and salt, and simmer until quite tender but not soft.

It has been made plain, I trust, that it is not necessary to rely solely on the damp-sodden vegetables of the pre-historic cuisine. It is just as easy to cook them nicely as otherwise, and a deal more satisfactory. The bounteous housewife Nature overwhelms us with her treasures of root and sap, and it seems almost an outrage to neglect the opportunities so lavishly offered to us.

I have just described a score or so of the plainer methods of cooking vegetables, simply as an indication of their possibilities, but the enterprising Chafer will find as he progresses in the art (and Chafing grows upon one like any other hobby) that there are dozens of others which lend themselves readily to his, or her, deft manipulation.

The grandfather of Charles Darwin was a poet of parts, and in his “Phytologica” he says:

This is wise advice, because the green broccoli is far better than the white.

There are many American vegetables which may be cooked without a twang. They are all in tins or bottles, bearing plain directions. Among others I can speak from personal experience of Sugar Corn, Green Corn, Oyster Corn, Boston Beans, Lima Beans, and Succotash. This last is a meal in itself, and of most excellent flavour and convenience. Green corn, too, reminds those who know the South African mealie in all its toothsomeness, of many a hearty supper of Kaffir mealies roasted in the embers of a camp fire, or even in that most primitive of ovens, an ant-heap, which, believe it or not as you will, turns out better cooked meats than some of your very patent, very modern, very “gadgetty” kitchen ranges, although not better, I ween, than my chaste Chaffinda.

From vegetables to salads is but one step. I do not see any valid reason for apologising for the inclusion of salads in a Chafing-Dish book. They are not cooked in a Chafing Dish, it is true, but it is part of my religion that no meal is complete without a salad, green for choice, but anyhow a salad. I do not insist on salad for breakfast, although on a blazing hot July day, after a swim or a tramp, or both, I can imagine worse things than an omelette, some kidneys and bacon, and a slice of real ham, and a green salad to top up with. But no dinner is really a dinner without a salad, and by that I do not mean three scraggy lettuce leaves, soused in vinegar, which as Salade de saison is the usual accompaniment to that disastrous hen, Poulet au cresson, which is a centipede as to legs and has no breast or liver wing.

As this screed is, after all, a plain record of personal likes and dislikes, I see no reason for concealing the fact that I have no use whatever, no manner of use in the wide wide world, for mayonnaise with salad. The Americans swear by it; I swear at it. My salad mixture, which goes with everything—absolutely everything—is simplicity itself. Eccolo!

Salad Mixture.

Into a large bowl put half a teaspoon of salt, same of Paprika, a dash of black pepper, freshly ground by a hand-mill, and a teaspoon of made English mustard. Mix them up well. Now add very gradually the very best quality of olive oil, almost drop by drop, to the quantity of three tablespoons, mixing all the time until the ingredients assume the consistency of cream; now thin this with one tablespoon of good wine vinegar, and amalgamate thoroughly. That is all I use.

Now and again, by way of extra titillation of the jaded palate, you may add half a tablespoon of Tarragon vinegar, herbs to taste, Spring onions, chives, French mustard, olives (French only), hard-boiled eggs, dandelion leaves, nasturtium leaves, and celery salt.

But there are half a dozen rules which I would seriously enjoin the salad mixer to bear in mind.

Only use a wooden spoon and fork for mixing.

Never cut a lettuce; always break it with the fingers.

Dry the lettuce thoroughly in a serviette or in a salad-basket before breaking.

Make the salad ten minutes before eating it. Neither more nor less.

Do not bother about garnishing the top of a salad; see the ingredients are well mixed. The decoration will look after itself and be much more artistic if left natural than if fussed into geometrical designs.

Make your mixture proportionate to your salad. This is a matter of intuition and experience combined. The test of right mixing is that no fluid should remain at the bottom of the bowl when finally mixed.

The “fatiguing” or turning over and over, that is, the actual mixing of the salad, should be very thoroughly done for just as long as is bearable to the verge of impatience. Rub a crust of bread with garlic or onion, put it in the bottom of the bowl and take it out just before serving. This is a chapon.

The true salad artist will never add any second dose of any ingredient during the process of mixing the sauce. I was once present at a salad duel between an eminent Belgian violoncellist and a British banker. The former was an artist, the latter a well-meaning amateur. They used the same cruet-stand, and during the mixing process the banker politely pushed the oil and vinegar across to the Belgian, who bowed and said: “Thanks. I never add!” The banker appreciated the rebuke and retired from the contest. Both salads were excellent.

The old salad-proverb about the oil-spendthrift, the vinegar-miser, and all the rest of it, is too old to quote, but it expresses a truism aptly enough. Three to one is, according to my view, a fair proportion of oil to vinegar, but this, as indeed most things in this so-called twentieth century of ours, is only a matter of individual taste, and I have no desire to suggest that my opinion should be given the force of law. I have known a salad enthusiast who coated each leaf of lettuce with oil on a camel’s-hair brush, but this I think is an exaggeration of artistry. On the other hand, the wild stirring of dollops of the four condiments in the salad spoon, which is then emptied vaguely into the salad, is childish and inefficient. The Italians have a proverb that runs:

The pimpernel is our burnet.

It is quite unnecessary to give full recipes for all the following salads. I have already indicated the mixture, and the choice of ingredients need only be hinted at.

Lettuce should be young, fresh, and crisp. There are many varieties, the most delicate of which perhaps is the Romaine.

Endive is good when quite young. It should be very light in colour. Do not mix it with lettuce. A few dandelion leaves are quite permissible.

Chicory makes an excellent salad, and radishes mix well with it.

Celery and Parmesan cheese go well together. The celery must be cut into half-inch pieces.

Cauliflower, cooked and cold, mixed with celery, or a very few slices of cold cooked carrot, is cool and pleasant.

Tomatoes and lettuce go well together, and onions are a good addition.

Potato salad requires firm round little potatoes cooked, cold, and cut into slices. The best kind is known as Hamburg Potatoes, and they may be had at the German Delikatessen shops. Avoid anchovies and olives with potato salad, but encourage chives and a sprinkling of cheese.

Celeriac.

This is a variety of celery, sometimes known as Dutch celery, a tuber which has a quite peculiar and characteristic flavour. It needs no addition whatever, and is an excellent accompaniment to all meats. Cut it in slices, after boiling it for twelve minutes, and mix carefully with plenty of liquid.

Mashed Potato Salad.

Beat up ordinary mashed potatoes with a little lukewarm weak stock or warm water instead of milk, and no butter. Then dress them with a little chopped chive, oil and vinegar, pepper and salt. This can be endlessly varied with chopped hard-boiled eggs, beetroot, cucumbers, anchovies, &c. This salad comes from that most excellent compendium of quaint conceits, “More Potpourri from a Surrey Garden,” by Mrs. C. W. Earle.

Old-fashioned salads, according to a seventeenth-century cook-book, were more diversified than ours. Among the ingredients of “Grand Sallets of divers compounds” were broom buds, pickled mushrooms, pickled oysters, blew figs, Virginia potato, caperons, crucifix pease, sage, mint, balm, burnet, violet leaves, red coleworts, raisins of the sun, charvel and ellicksander buds. Some of these we know under other names, but “blew figs” and “ellicksander buds” are untraceable. The list has a Rabelaisian smack, and gives one some idea of the crude admixture of flavourings which was acceptable to our forebears.

In a very charming old book, “Travels in England in 1702,” by C. P. Moritz, a Prussian clergyman, the following passage seems quotable: “An English dinner generally consists of a piece of half-boiled, or half-roasted, meat; and a few cabbage leaves boiled in plain water; on which they pour a sauce made of flour and butter. This, I assure you, is the usual method of dressing vegetables in England. The slices of bread and butter which they give you with your tea are as thin as poppy leaves. But there is another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. You take one slice after the other, and hold it to the fire on a fork till the butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices at once; this is called toast.”

Another part of the same book describes the kitchen in a country inn, and gives a picture which seems to describe some old Dutch interior. “I now, for the first time, found myself in one of these kitchens which I had so often read of in Fielding’s fine novels; and which certainly give one, on the whole, a very accurate idea of English manners. The chimney, in this kitchen, where they were roasting and boiling, seemed to be taken off from the rest of the room, and enclosed by a wooden partition, the rest of the apartment was made use of as a sitting and eating room. All round on the sides were shelves with pewter dishes and plates, and the ceiling was well stored with provisions of various kinds, such as sugar-loaves, black puddings, hams, sausages, flitches of bacon, &c.”

A modern Dr. Syntax in search of the picturesque would vainly nowadays look for anything approaching this homely simplicity in any English hostelry. The modern tendency seems all directed towards spurious finery, meretricious decoration, and uncomfortable New Art. The old inns are neglected, and the new hotels merely vulgarly gorgeous. The food is ambitious and basely imitative of bad French models. The advent of the ubiquitous motor car on old country roads, away from the railways, may in time improve matters, and revive, to a certain extent, the extinct glories of the old coaching inns; but as yet there is little, if any, improvement to be marked. In the meanwhile, I would suggest that every travelling motor car be provided with a Chafing Dish, and thus mitigate or improve the dull pretentious meals which the country hotel proprietor thinks proper to provide. The Chafing Dish and the motor car seem made for one another. Will somebody try the combination?

There are just a few more salads which I should like to recommend, premising, however, that they are not altogether orthodox. By this I mean that they are not wholly composed of greenstuffs, but require the addition of extraneous appetisers.

Walnuts and Green Peas.

Boil and blanch a dozen walnuts; break them in halves, mix them with a pint of green peas, cooked and cold, and toss them about in a small quantity of dressing.

Sprouts and Chestnuts.

Boil and skin a dozen chestnuts. Break them up and mix with a pint of cold cooked Brussels sprouts. Toss them in a small amount of mixture.

Jardinière.

Almost any cold cooked vegetables. For choice, use equal portions of sliced potatoes, green peas, carrots, beans, celery, tomatoes, and onions. Add plenty of dressing.

Cucumbers and Anchovies.

Wash, scrape and dry the anchovies. Chop them up. Have the cucumber thinly sliced and thoroughly drained; plenty of salt, and little mixture. Sprinkle the anchovies over the sliced cucumber.

Cauliflower and Bacon.

Dry the cauliflower and break up into small pieces, using all the flower and very little stalk or green. Cut a couple of slices of bacon into dice, sprinkle it about in the cauliflower, and use plenty of dressing.

Bread Salad.

Cut three slices of stale bread (crumb only) into half-inch squares; same amount of sliced cold cooked potatoes; three tomatoes in quarters, one onion; toss all well together with a good deal of dressing. This sounds very simple, but as Sam Weller’s pieman said, “It’s the seasoning as does it.”

Lest I be thought quite unspeakably impossible in these last recipes, let me assure the worthy sceptics that they are in no wise guess-work, but one and all duly approved, and that I have merely taken the trouble to collate them and set them down here. They are excellent and original. I think that many folks will be grateful for them.

CHAPTER·VII·EGGS·AND·SAVOURIES

“The vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg.” Pope.

In the name of the profit: Eggs! Although farming in England may spell ruin, poultry almost always pays, and if intelligently and economically managed, one rarely hears of the failure of a poultry-farm. We import a vast number of millions of eggs annually (many of which come to a deservedly unrighteous end in villainous omelettes), but it would be easy, with capital, initiative, and incubators, to produce them one and all in Great Britain and make the egg trade a national industry.

A couple of generations ago, when any one walked gingerly in the street, he or she was said to be going at an “egg-trot,” because it reminded one of a good housewife riding to market at a jog-trot pace with eggs in her panniers. Let us therefore approach the subject of eggs at an “egg-trot.”

A good egg is never bad. That is not such an inept truism as it looks. A good egg is unspoilable, even by the worst cook. There are over four hundred and fifty ways of cooking eggs, each of which has some peculiar excellence denied to the others. You cannot even make an omelette without breaking eggs, and most people find breakfast almost impossible without the regulation hen-fruit. To teach one’s grandmother how to suck eggs is a futile labour partaking of juvenile presumption, but it is at least easier than persuading the average cook that the fried egg of commerce is only one out of scores of simple breakfast egg-dishes. “There is reason in roasting eggs.” Even the most trivial culinary conjuring trick has some good motive for being performed in one way rather than in another. When wood fires were usual it was more common to roast eggs than to boil them, and great care was required to prevent their being “ill-roasted, all on one side,” as Touchstone says in the play. Which is an additional reason for keeping strictly to the formula. Eggs are ticklish things to monkey with, and it is much easier to break them than to make them.

Learned disquisitions have before now been written on “How to boil an egg.” It is not in my province to touch on that subject. The votary of the Chafing Dish may be presumed to have enough common sense to come in out of the rain, and to be able to boil an egg. It is not much to ask. Pope, by the way, thought it vulgar to boil an egg, but then we are all vulgar nowadays—and glory in it. Neither do I propose to expatiate upon egg-flip, egg-nog, and kindred “dulceties.” I will give a few plain straightforward recipes for eggs in the Chafing Dish, and leave egg-eccentricities to my betters. I have only to premise that there is but one kind of egg. The Best. Real new-laid eggs are reliable friends. All others are base impostors!

Poached Eggs.

The Chafing Dish should be more than half full of boiling water. Break each egg separately into a saucer and slip it steadily and dexterously into the Chafing Dish. Light the lamp, cover up the water and eggs, and put the dish over the lower hot-water pan, which should have in it a pint of hot water. Let it heat until the whites of the eggs are set; then remove the eggs from the pan with the special flat implement ad hoc. Put the eggs on rounds of toast. Sprinkle them with pepper, salt and parsley, and put a tiny piece of butter on top of each egg.

Scrambled Eggs.

Beat up three eggs, whites and yolks, in a bowl, and add a pinch of salt. Put a good tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish, over a pan of hot water. When the butter sizzles, pour in the eggs, and stir with a wooden spoon very briskly for a minute and a half to two minutes, keeping the eggs from adhering to the sides and bottom of the Dish. Have rounds of toast ready, and pour the eggs on to them. Dust them with Paprika and parsley.

It is easy and pleasant to vary plain scrambled eggs with a dozen odds and ends. Asparagus tips, for instance, bacon dice, tiny slicelets of ham, green peas, thin rounds of Brunswick sausage, broad beans, chicken livers, button mushrooms, tomatoes, or chopped nasturtium leaves. All these should be added, cooked of course, towards the end of the stirring operation, and just before serving. Many other ingredients might be suggested, but the ingenious innovator will be able to think these out for himself, and he can always christen his invention scrambled eggs à la quelque chose to please his own fancy and flatter his friends.

Omelettes.

An omelette should not be too lightly undertaken. There are few things more tricky, more unreliable, more human, in a sense, than an omelette. You may make it a dozen times with perfect success. It will be light, frothy, ethereal, almost gossamer-like in its impalpable fairyhood. The thirteenth time you proceed on precisely the same lines, use the same material, and in every way follow the same formula, and the result is chaos. If there be a sex in cookery, omelettes must be essentially feminine.

This is how to make an omelette. Beat three eggs lightly with two tablespoons of milk, a little salt and pepper. Put one tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish over the hot-water pan, and when sizzling hot, pour in the eggs. You must hold the dish in the left hand, and rapidly scrape away with a knife the cooked egg where it seems to adhere, letting the liquid portion follow the knife. It should be cooked in less than fifty seconds if the water beneath it is boiling. Then gently, but firmly, slip the knife under the left-hand edge of the omelette and fold it over rapidly and neatly to the side of the dish opposite the handle. Have a very hot plate ready; reverse it on to the dish, turn the latter over the former quickly, and the omelette will (or should) rest on the plate.

Of course all this sounds very easy, but it needs knack and practice—lots of both. When entirely successful, however, it is most gratifying and self-flattering. You feel a real cook at last, and look upon Ude, Carême, Francatelli, and the other great names of history as brothers. All Chafers go through that pleasant period when all goes right and nothing goes wrong. Sometimes it lasts quite a while; but at last, sooner or later, there comes a moment when we know we feel that we know how little we know. As at golf, when we never play so well as during our first month, even so is it with Chaffinda.

The testing of eggs should not rightly be one of the Chafer’s duties. He should be able to rely on his purveyor. The best eggs I ever had in London were provided by an old landlady who told me that she got them twice a week from the country. When I asked her what county they came from, she said, “They come all the way from Clapham Junction, sir!” Anyhow, they were remarkably good, and I have been served with less reliable ones in country farmhouses. This was possibly for the same reason that one can rarely get fish at the seaside until the London train comes in.

Eggs en Cocotte.

You must provide some of those dear little fireproof china cups especially made for the purpose. Butter these little cups. Put two teaspoonsful of cream into each. Then break very carefully an egg into each. Dust with pepper, salt, and parsley. Stand these cups in the Chafing Dish with enough boiling water to come half-way up the cups. Have the lower pan full of hot water underneath. Boil up gently till the eggs are just set. Serve in the cups very hot, taking care in hauling them out of the Chafing Dish as they are very easily dropped.

Lady Effingham’s Eggs.

Put two slices of Gruyère cheese (not very thin) in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of butter. Break two eggs in a saucer and slide them on to the cheese; sprinkle with salt and Paprika and let it simmer (over the hot-water pan) till the eggs are set. Serve with fingers of toast.

Newmarket Eggs.

Put a tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish. When it sizzles add an onion cut into slices; let it get well browned. Then throw in three fair-sized potatoes in slices. Pour over these the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, adding salt and pepper. Heat up to boiling-point. Serve with toast.

Kempton Eggs.

Cut into slices three hard-boiled eggs and one onion; put the latter only in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of butter. Stir it, and fry the onion to a light brown, then sprinkle in half a tablespoon of flour, and add two tablespoons of milk, pepper and salt. Boil up and then add the eggs; serve at once with grated Parmesan cheese.

Anchovy Eggs.

Place a tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish, add half a teaspoon of dry mustard, two tablespoons of tomato sauce, one of Worcester sauce, and one of mushroom ketchup. Let it simmer, and then drop in four hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, salted and peppered. Prepare four rounds of toast, spread them with good anchovy paste, or, better still, with Patum Peperium, and put the eggs on the toast, pouring over them the mixture.

This a remarkably good dish after a dance in the country and a ten-mile drive home. If the proper preparations are made, it can be turned out in five minutes in the billiard-room, and it picks one up in a thoroughly businesslike and efficient manner. Those cold winter drives after a busy night’s dancing, especially if the supper was good and frequent, demand a powerful restorative.

Now come we to the great question of Welsh Rabbit. I venture to doubt whether Rarebit is defensible, and I have read shoals of arguments for and against. Anyhow, my kind is a Rabbit, and it tastes as nice—or nicer.

A small boy walking across a common with his mother espied a bunny. “Look, mother, there goes a rabbit!” “Nonsense, my boy, it must have been imagination.” “Mother, is imagination white behind?”

There is no imagination about a Welsh Rabbit. It is sternly real. But not, I think, quite as indigestible as generally supposed, especially if it be liberally dosed with Paprika, which I find to be marvellously digestive. A well-made Rabbit should be suave in flavour, not harsh, stringy, or pungent. There should be a silky sensation of sensuous softness, and, above all things, it should not tickle the palate. I fear that I am led to dogmatise on the rabbit, and to ferret out my own didactic ideas on the subject, but if my rabbit be carefully concocted and intelligently degustated, I am convinced that I shall be forgiven.

Welsh Rabbit.

Use about half a pound of hard, dry, sound, mild cheese, without flaw or speck. Cut it up into tiny dice, in fact the smaller the better; some indeed insist on grating the cheese, but I have found this to be an unnecessary labour. Put a tablespoon of butter into the dish and knead it well with a wooden spoon until it begins to sizzle. Add half a teaspoon of Paprika, rather less of salt, and a tablespoon of beer (anything except bitter). Mix all thoroughly. Turn in the cheese and stir it about until it gets as consistent as thick cream, adding two to three more tablespoons of beer gradually, and taking great care that it does not become lumpy or stringy. Now put in a teaspoonful of made mustard. Keep on stirring until bubbles appear. It is then ready. You should beforehand get some toasts ready and as soon as the bubbling is well developed plunge in the toasts and cover them with the cheese. Serve on very hot plates. Milk can be used instead of beer, and condiments may be added in the shape of Worcester sauce or Tabasco, but I do not recommend them. Everything depends on regular and practically continuous stirring, always in one direction of course.

If you want to turn the Welsh Rabbit into a Buck Rabbit, drop a poached egg upon each piece of toast on top of the cheese. Here you have the whole art of Rabbiting, and it is a very good thing to eat—sometimes.

The right and only place for Savouries at a dinner-party is fixed and determined by immutable custom, but at a Chafing-Dish meal, be it luncheon or supper, more latitude is allowed, and a savoury may pop up here and there at the most unexpected—and thereby most delightful—moment. I see nothing heterodox in having a savoury instead of hors d’œuvres, or introducing it after the fish or instead of sweets. Few people, and those only of the baser sort, despise a simple savoury. It is such a succulent trifle, a mere mouthful of suggestion, an airy nothing that agrees with everything. There are of course savouries and savouries. I can only give a very few recipes, but have tried to make them as diverse and appetising as possible.

Ham Toast.

A quarter of a pound of lean ham, chopped fine. Do not mince it. Mincing machines, however patent and “adjustable,” have a way of reducing everything to an unholy pulp. Put the ham in the Chafing Dish with a teaspoon of Worcester sauce, half a teaspoon of good curry powder (I like Ventacachellum’s), a small tablespoon of butter, three drops of Tabasco, and two tablespoons of milk. Mix all well, heat up for five minutes and then spread on hot fingers of toast.

Cheese Matador.

Put a walnut of butter into the Chafing Dish, also a Spanish onion sliced. Simmer for three minutes. Then cut a quarter of a pound of hard dry cheese into dice, and drop into the mixture; add half a cup of milk and stir well till it is all thoroughly amalgamated and the cheese melted; add salt and Paprika and one beaten-up egg. Hot up for another three minutes and serve with toast.

Savoury Biscuits.

Mix up the yolks of two eggs and two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. You can buy this ready grated, but it is not as good as if you grate it yourself. Add half a teaspoon of mustard and some salt. Spread the mixture on thinly buttered water biscuit (or thin Captains), put the biscuits in the Chafing Dish, over boiling water, and let them get slowly hot.

Braised Olives.

Stone neatly a dozen Spanish olives. Put them in the Chafing Dish with enough strong bouillon to cover them. Add a wine-glass of claret and the rind of half a lemon. Boil up quickly, strain, and serve the olives on toast or heated biscuit.

Bombay Toast.

A tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish; as it melts stir in two eggs, yolks and whites, half a teaspoon of Paprika, the same of anchovy sauce, and half a dozen capers, chopped up. When very hot spread this upon rounds of buttered toast.

Devilled Chestnuts.

Boil half a pound of chestnuts and remove the shells and skins. Break them in handy little lumps. When cold and hard return them to the Chafing Dish and fry them in a tablespoon of butter, half a teaspoon of Paprika, and plenty of salt, until they are well cooked through. Drain and dry them on blotting-paper, and put a drop of Tabasco on each lump.

Salted Almonds.

Melt one and a half tablespoons of butter. Drop into it a quarter of a pound of blanched almonds, and hot up till the almonds are well burned, brown but not black. Drain them on blotting-paper and sprinkle them with plenty of salt and a little Paprika.

The Devil.

One can devil bones, biscuits, meat and fish in a Chafing Dish very nearly as well as on the grill. Care must be taken always to score the flesh across with deep incisions, so that the devil mixture penetrates well into the meat. This is the best devil mixture for Chafing-Dish purposes that I know. There may be better, but I have not come across them. Mix well upon a plate a teaspoon of mustard, the same of Worcester sauce and anchovy sauce, two teaspoons of olive oil and half a teaspoon of Paprika. Let the meat soak up this mixture, and then hot it up in a tablespoon of butter till it almost boils. A chicken drumstick makes the best devil in the world, but biscuits dipped in the mixture are not to be despised, and even slices of cold cooked meat, beef or mutton, are very toothsome if treated in the same manner. Any cold bird makes an excellent devil.

Macaroni.

Although it may not come quite strictly under the head of Eggs and Savouries, this seems about the right place to expatiate upon Macaroni, the national food of Italy and the delight of every cultivated nation.

Real macaroni is made of hard wheat of a semi-translucent kind, which is richer in gluten and other nitrogenous matter than soft wheat. Macaroni is nothing but flour and water mixed in a cylinder, which concocts it into stiff paste. Then it is rolled under a huge granite wheel which flattens it into a smooth mass. It is cut into squares, and flattened by the wheel again and again until it is thoroughly kneaded. The dough then goes into an upright metal cylinder closed at the lower end with a thick disc of copper. This is pierced with openings through which a plunge-piston squeezes the dough into threads. The threads are cut off at regular intervals, and hung upon wooden drying-rods. Real macaroni is tender, yellowish, rough in texture, and elastic. It breaks with a clean, porcelainlike fracture. When it boils it swells to twice its size, and does not become sticky, but keeps its tubular form without collapse. It will keep any length of time in a dry cool place.

There are many agreeable variations on the macaroni theme, some of which suggest music rather than cooking. Everybody knows Vermicelli, but among the lesser known but equally admirable kinds are Tagliatelli, Lasagnete, Fuselli, Bicorni, Candele, Cannelloni, Pennoni, Capelli di Angelo, and many more. Each has its own little special peculiarity. All are alike excellent.

Tagliatelli.

Perhaps the handiest for Chafing-Dish purposes is Tagliatelli. Boil two pints of water in the Dish, put in half a pound of Tagliatelli, boil eight minutes, then strain. Return to the Dish, add a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese, and the same of butter. Toss round and round until well mixed, and serve very hot. Tomatoes mix well with macaroni, and so do mushrooms; but the real macaroni-lover will prefer it by itself, accompanied always, of course, by plenty of cheese. Mustard mixes well with it, but be very chary of the salt, for it is already salted during the process of preparation. To make macaroni au gratin, which seems (unaccountably enough) to be the only way in which it is served in nine British households out of ten, the top of the cooked macaroni must be well covered with grated Parmesan cheese, and then carefully browned with a salamander.

Ravioli.

Another most useful Italian preparation is Ravioli, which is compounded of a variety of good things. As Leporello says in Don Giovanni: “Madamina, il catalogo è questo!” Eggs, Macaroni, Paste, Pork, Chicken, Vegetables, and Cheese. It is a sort of White Knight portmanteau food, and if quite fresh (it is best in summer) is rightly termed “A dinner in one course”—if you cook it badly you may omit one letter in the last word.

This is how to prepare Ravioli with the help of Chaffinda. To two pints of boiling water in the Chafing Dish put a quarter of a pound of Ravioli; boil for ten minutes, then strain. Return to the dish; add half a teaspoon of butter, the same of grated Parmesan cheese, and hot it up for three minutes. Additional zest may be given, though it is by no means necessary, by cooking with the Ravioli a few fresh mushrooms, tomatoes, or even anchovies or olives. The best Ravioli I have found in London come from the Vegetable Meal Company of Soho.

With Macaroni or Ravioli I always suggest the drinking of Chianti, or Lacrima Christi. The former can often be obtained of quite good quality, not too rough or fiery. As to the latter, it is rare to find it drinkable. As a rule it is impossible. But the combination of food and wine is a good memory-reviver of a week at Genoa.

CHAPTER·VIII·SAUCES·

Madame de Staël said that she did not believe in ghosts—but that she was afraid of them. After the same fashion, I do not altogether believe in sauces, or perhaps I ought to say in any save the very simplest; but I fully recognise their great value in the assimilation of food.

Many dishes, without their special sauces, would be like a well-known song sung without an accompaniment. However beautifully delivered, no one, be he never so musical, could honestly say that he enjoyed Schubert’s “Erlkönig,” unaccompanied. The accompaniment is so much a part of the artistic whole that to separate them would be sheer vandalism. Something of the same intimate oneness exists in cookery. Who would care to eat lamb divorced from mint sauce, or boiled mutton without the necessary caper sauce, or goose minus apple sauce?

At the same time it is a culinary axiom that the less sauce used the better. A dish—any dish—“covered in sauce” is an abomination. We have the august authority of Pliny for moderation and simplicity. “Their best and most wholesome feeding is upon one dish, and no more, and the same plaine and simple: for surely this huddling of many meats one upon another of divers tastes is pestiferous. But sundrie sauces are more dangerous than that.” This is Holland’s translation.

Another point worthy of consideration is that sauce is to a great extent a geographical expression. What may be most excellent in Madrid is wholly out of place in Inverness; and what is nice at Nice is nasty at Norwich.

Insufficient account, I venture to think, is taken of the influence of climate upon national food, and it is often difficult if not impossible to acclimatise foreign fare to British stomachs, not because of anything inherent in the food, but simply as a matter of latitude. It is an historical commonplace that in the bleak cold north of Europe boar’s flesh was found more to man’s taste than that of the bull or bear, because it is fatter, richer, and produces much more heat. For this very reason in the South and East of Europe the flesh of swine is an abomination. In the Scandinavian Edda we are told that a boar was killed every night for the food of the warriors who feasted in high Valhalla. The bones were all preserved, together with the hide and head, and in the morning they were put together and re-endowed with life. The name of this huge pig was Sœhrimner, the cauldron in which it was boiled was called Eldhrimner, and the cook Andhrimner.

Both bear-ham and boar-ham are delicacies to this day in the North of Europe.

Much depends, too, upon the cooking; bad cooking is waste, both of money and comfort. Those whom God has joined in matrimony, ill-cooked joints and worse-cooked potatoes have often put asunder. In sauces, above all things, careful cooking, implicit keeping to the exact formulæ of recipes, and a restraint of all imagination, are immensely necessary. Not even the greatest artist can afford to juggle with sauces. They are fixed, immutable, and unalterable. A very favourite expression in French culinary manuals is the injunction to the cook: Travaillez bien votre sauce. The amateur sauce-maker would do well to bear this in mind. The sauce must be well worked, amalgamated, combined; otherwise it is a mere mess, lacking cohesion and perfection.

It is alleged of the incomparable Soyer that he said that sauces are to cookery what grammar is to language. Whether he really said so or not matters little. Some of the Soyer sauces are classics to this day, and not to be lightly imitated—especially on the Chafing Dish.

Let it be borne in mind that each and every sauce should have a character of its own. Many otherwise quite virtuous cooks live and die in the belief that they cannot make a sauce sufficiently savoury without putting into it everything that happens to be available, thinking, ignorantly enough, that every addition is bound to be an improvement.

There are only two real foundation sauces—mères sauces, or grandes sauces, as the French call them—the white and the brown sauce. All other sauces are more or less based on these two.

The great Carême resigned the position of Master of the Mouth to George IV. after only a few weeks’ service, and at an honorarium of £1000 a year, because he could not bear the English climate. His culinary swan-song took the form of a wondrous sauce, now alas! lost, which he called la dernière pensée de Carême.

A quite excellent and easily prepared sauce, which the very poorest households can make, and which will give zest to the simplest meal, is that described in the Delamere Cookery Book. This is the recipe for Pleasant Companionship sauce. A kind word will stir up the dormant appetite, while a harsh one will extinguish it, and, what is worse, will check the digestion of nutriment already taken. Such sauce may be regarded as Moral Sauce.

Reasoning from these winged words, we may infer that the remark so often heard from the mouths of little girl-children in the street: “Now, I won’t ’ave none o’ your sauce!” must really mean that there is a lack of Moral Sauce in the family circle.

In the recipes for the following sauces, I have purposely kept the ingredients as simple as possible; they are all reliable and appetising. As to which sauce appertains especially to which fish or meat, I do not propose to enter. That is a matter of taste, experience, and individuality, and I need hardly add that a white sauce does not go well with brown meat, nor brown sauce with white meat. Such admonitions are surely unnecessary to the advanced Chafist.

Butter Sauce.

Two tablespoons of butter, the same of flour; melt and mix together in the Dish, bring to boiling-point and allow to boil up for half a minute, then pour in a cupful of boiling water, to reduce the same to the consistency of cream; boil up again, stirring all the time, add a squeeze of lemon before serving.

White Sauce.

Mix well in the Chafing Dish two tablespoons of flour, one of butter, a small grating of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt; add a tumbler of milk; hot it up, stirring the while, and strain before using.

Brown Sauce.

Two tablespoons of butter. Heat and stir until it is brown and sizzling, then add a tablespoon of Tarragon vinegar, the same of Worcester sauce, half a tablespoon of chopped capers, a teaspoon of anchovy sauce, and a wine-glass of bouillon. Boil up all this for three minutes.

Piquant Sauce.

Mix up in the Dish a teaspoon of each of the following, chopped finely: gherkins, capers, shallots (or mild onions); add half a teaspoon of black pepper and a tablespoon of vinegar. Boil this for three minutes, then add a wine-glass of bouillon and a tablespoon of “brown thickening”—which is sold ready made by grocers—and a dash of anchovy sauce. Boil up again and skim the surface before using.

Maître d’Hôtel Sauce.

Mix up well two tablespoons of butter with one of flour, a grating of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of black pepper, the same of salt, rather more of chopped parsley, and a good squeeze of lemon. Put all this in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of milk. Stir it until it boils up, and then serve very hot.

Ravigote or Rémoulade Sauce.

These are to all intents and purposes the same sauce, save that Rémoulade has an added dose of oil and mustard. Mix a tablespoon of flour with the same of butter, a grating of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of pepper, the same of salt, the same of chopped parsley, and a good squeeze of lemon. Put this in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of bouillon, boil it up and skim it. Now mix up separately a tablespoon each of Tarragon and Chili vinegar and Worcester sauce, with a teaspoon of anchovy sauce. Boil up this mixture, and after two minutes’ boiling add it to the former mixture and combine the two.

Reform Sauce.

A cupful of bouillon in the Dish, add a wine-glass of port (or claret, but port is more orthodox), half as much Worcester sauce, a teaspoon of anchovy sauce, and a full tablespoon of red currant jelly. Boil it all up for three minutes, and skim before using.

Soubise Sauce.

Peel and slice four onions; put them in the Dish with a teaspoon of butter, a little nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Cover up and stew very slowly until the onions are almost dissolved. Then add two tablespoons of flour, a cold cooked potato cut into dice, a cupful of bouillon, and the same of milk. Stir and boil for three minutes. Then rub the sauce through a sieve and hot up again before serving.

Bread Sauce.

A tablespoon of bread-crumbs in the Dish with an onion, pepper and salt, a cup of milk, and half a tablespoon of butter. Hot up and stir for four minutes. Take out the onion before using.

Mustard Sauce.

To the foregoing plain butter sauce add a teaspoon of made mustard, a tablespoon of Chili vinegar, a squeeze of lemon, and a teaspoon of anchovy sauce. Make and serve very hot.

Poor Man’s Sauce.

Chop up a fair-sized onion in the Chafing Dish with half a tablespoon of butter. Fry to a light brown, then add a cup of bouillon, a teaspoon of vinegar, pepper and salt, and a teaspoon of chopped parsley. Stir vigorously and add gradually half a tablespoon of flour, and another half-tablespoon of butter. Boil up the sauce for two minutes.

Madeleine Sauce.

Put in the Dish a teaspoon of bread-crumbs, two shredded shallots, a walnut of butter, a teaspoon of vinegar and two tablespoons of bouillon. Boil this for three minutes with pepper and salt. The sauce should not be too thick.

Black Butter Sauce.

A walnut of butter in the dish; heat it till it is thoroughly brown, then add a tablespoon of vinegar, pepper and salt, and hot it up again.

Italian Sauce.

Put in the dish the peel of a quarter of a lemon, three sprigs of parsley, one of thyme, four button mushrooms, cut up small, a walnut of butter, and a suspicion of garlic. Hot up, and when all is well mixed pour in half a cup of bouillon; let it get thick, but not boil. Then take out the garlic, and add half a walnut of butter.

Onion Sauce.

Cut up two good-sized onions into slices. Simmer them gently with a tablespoon of butter and two slices of ham, one fat slice and one lean slice, a teaspoon of flour, salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar, a wine-glass of bouillon, and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Hot up for three minutes.

Gubbins’ Sauce.

This is the best sauce I know, and I have tried many, for grills or anything in that way. I copy it verbatim (and without permission) from that most excellent food-book entitled “Cakes and Ale,” by Mr. Edward Spencer. Gubbins’ Sauce is peculiarly adaptable to the Chafing Dish, and is made in this wise: Fill the lower hot-water dish with boiling water. Keep it so. Melt in the Chafing Dish proper a lump of butter the size of a large walnut. Stir into it, when melted, two teaspoonsful of made mustard, then a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, half that quantity of Tarragon vinegar, and a tablespoonful of cream—Devonshire or English. Season with salt, black pepper and cayenne, according to the (presumed) tastes and requirements of the breakfasters. So far the recipe. I should add that although the ingenious inventor puts Gubbins’ Sauce with a grill among his breakfast allurements, it is by no means necessary to confine it to that meal. I have found it excellent at midnight—and later—with devilled kidneys, and it is not to be despised at any time of the day when you feel that way inclined.

“The Gastronomic Regenerator: a Simplified and entirely New System of Cookery,” by Monsieur A. Soyer of the Reform Club, London, 1846. Such is the mouth-filling title of one of the most interesting and curious works of the last century. The two-page dialogue with Lord M(arcus) H(ill), and the extraordinary recipe for “The Celestial and Terrestrial Cream of Great Britain,” are in themselves inimitable in their quaint pomposity. Maga for August 1846 reviews the work kindly and good-humouredly, and says that the “Gastronomic Regenerator” reminds them of no book so much as the “Despatches of Arthur Duke of Wellington.” It may be a matter of dispute, adds Maga, whether Wellington or Soyer acquired his knowledge in the face of the hotter fire. Although Soyer was comic in his pompous affectation it must not be forgotten that he did splendid work in the Crimea in feeding the sick and wounded. Also his sauces are master works. And for these two things much may be forgiven him.

The foregoing sauces are best described as the regulars. There are plenty of others, mostly of a rather elaborate description, which those more experienced than myself must describe. I will content myself with adding quite a few irregular or freak sauces, if I may use the expression.

Fisherman’s Sauce.

This is a rather rich mixture, adapted for fresh-water fish. After a decent day’s sport with the tricksome Mayfly, the quarter of an hour just before dinner may profitably be employed in concocting it. Half a pint of cream, or milk, but cream is better, two tablespoons of walnut ketchup, home made for choice, and one tablespoon of anchovy sauce. Boil these up for five minutes, and just before serving add a small walnut of butter, a teaspoon of flour, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of cayenne. Stir up all together, and serve very hot. It is the best fresh-water fish-sauce going.

Bigarade Sauce.

This is essentially the wild-duck sauce, and is a welcome and agreeable variant on the stereotyped port-wine sauce. Pare the rind of two oranges, shred the rind thinly, and boil up for five minutes in as little water as possible. Set the rind aside. Melt a walnut of butter in the Dish, mix it with half a tablespoon of flour, and stir it till it begins to burn; add a cupful of bouillon, pepper and salt, the squeezed juice of both oranges, and a teaspoon of soft white sugar. Now put in the shredded rinds, boil up for two minutes, and serve with the duck. If you have not time to make this sauce, mix a glass of port wine, a dash of cayenne, and a squeeze of lemon. Slice the breast of the duck and pour this mixture over it. A very useful adjunct to wild duck is a simple orange salad. Divide two or three oranges into sections, dress them with oil, vinegar, pepper and salt, and eat it as you would any ordinary salad.

Périgueux Sauce.

This is simply Truffle Sauce, and appeals mainly to the vulgar-minded. It is made thus: Chop up two truffles very finely. Put them in the Chafing Dish with a glass of sherry and a walnut of butter, and boil for five minutes; add pepper and salt and a squeeze of lemon. I am of opinion that truffles (which the ancients thought were the product of thunder) should only be eaten in one way, and that is en serviette, cooked in hot wood ashes and eaten with praise and thanksgiving. The flavour of truffles I take to be one of the most perfect in the whole category of food-stuffs. Their indiscriminate use in shreds, choppings, patterns, and for ornament, I consider to be a capital sin. The charcutier is mostly to blame for this; any old thing dressed up aux truffes he considers a delicacy. One day a band of knowledgeable eaters will slay all charcutiers.

Truffles suggest pigs; pigs suggest, to me, Berkshire; and Berkshire a certain witty lady who, speaking of a local magnate, a self-made man, and a very wealthy one too, but who retained his awfully uncouth manners, described him as a wild boar whom civilisation had turned into a pig. I fear me there are many such.

One of the English Kings died of a surfeit of lampreys, and one of the French Ministers of a surfeit of truffles, which were also alleged to have mainly contributed to the demise of the famous gourmand Béquet, who was the predecessor of Jules Janin on the Débats, and on whom Roger de Beauvoir wrote this epitaph:

An ex-chef to whom I told this story of Béquet was profoundly moved, and said simply: “It must have been a beautiful death!”

CHAPTER·IX·SWEETS·AND·ODDMENTS·

The warm glow of virtuous satisfaction induced by the knowledge that one has done what was expected of one is my sole excuse for the contents of this chapter. I have no sweet tooth, and my experience in the cooking of sweets has been limited to the few recipes which come later on. Even these I would rather have omitted, because it is so easy to buy éclairs, petits fours, and other “dulceties” wherewith to finish off a Chafing-Dish meal, but it is just on the confines of possibility that this book may be read by a lady—or, if I am lucky, by two or even three—and I should be indeed accounted a poor instructor if I omitted sweets from my curriculum. “I humbly beg pardon of heaven, and the lady,” as Mr. Pepys said when he kissed the cook.

“Give the bairns pudding in plenty, again say I”—so wrote Sir Walter Scott, and I am heartily at one with him, but Chaffinda does not accommodate herself to the fabrication of pudding—and, besides, children ought to be in bed when supper-time brings the Chafing Dish on the table. Baking is of course impossible, and boiling in a cloth equally so. I have already said that Chaffinda—being so nearly human—has her limitations, and these are two of them, which I, for one, in no wise regret. Nevertheless, pudding is a great institution—in its proper place—which is childhood.

Our national Jack Pudding was a common object of whilom country fairs, a sort of typical buffoon who performed pudding tricks on a stage; one of them being to swallow a number of yards of black puddings amidst yokel plaudits. Curiously enough, and this is an etymological puzzle well worth following up, the typical buffoon of most European countries is christened after the commonest article of the daily food of the people. France has her Jean Potage; Germany, Hanswurst; Italy, Macaroni; and Holland, Pickel Herringe. This can hardly be a coincidence.

The learned Dr. Thudichum wisely says: “The state of culture of every nation can be estimated comparatively by its confectionery, even when we know little of its cookery, for confectionery is the most advanced and refined part of cookery, and thus enables an expert to draw a conclusion backwards regarding the kind of cookery out of which it originated.”

This is certainly true to a limited extent, but to attempt a rough and ready analysis on these lines is like dissecting a hummingbird with a hatchet. Generalisations are as dangerous as July oysters.

Apple Fritters.

Now for my sweets. The first one on the list is the familiar Apple Fritter, or Beignet de Pommes. It is quite easily cooked, especially if a little care be taken over the concoction of the all-important matter of batter.

Begin by carefully peeling four apples, fairly large ones for choice, then cut them into slices, about one-eighth of an inch thick, and take out the cores. Now make the batter. Put four tablespoons of flour in a basin with half a teaspoon of salt. Pour one tablespoon of oil on to half a tumbler of tepid water. They will not mix of course. Add this gradually to the flour, stirring it well. Next beat up two whites of egg to a very stiff froth, and stir it lightly into the flour. The batter is then ready for use. The eggs should not be added until you are quite ready to make the fritters. Now with a skewer or fork take up the apple rings, one by one, dip them in the batter, see that they are well covered, and then drop them into the Chafing Dish in which you have heated two tablespoons of butter to boiling-point. Fry the apples until they are soft, and of a golden brown colour. Drain them on kitchen paper, and sprinkle them with a little castor sugar.

Stewed Apples.

Apples, plainly stewed in slices, in milk and sugar, and then served on a bed of rice, are very satisfactory. The experimenting Chafist will find that sweets can very often be adapted so as to be suitable for the Chafing Dish. But always rehearse your impromptus before trying them in public.

Stewed Rhubarb.

Cut a pound of fresh sweet rhubarb into two-inch lengths, put it in the Chafing Dish with a tumbler of water, the peel of one lemon, and a tablespoon of soft white sugar. Let it boil up until the rhubarb is quite soft, and then either serve hot, or—preferably—let it get quite cold and serve with clotted cream.

Almost any stoneless fruit can be cooked in the same way. Gooseberries, currants, strawberries, and raspberries all make excellent compote, but care must be taken that the fruit does not get pulpy: it should be quite soft, but retain its proper shape. Quite ripe fruit is not so desirable as fruit that is just going to be ripe.

Fried Pineapple.

Cut a smallish pine into half-inch slices, paring the skin, of course, and split in half three or four ordinary penny sponge cakes. Fry these latter in the Chafing Dish in a tablespoon of butter till they are light brown on both sides. Take them out and keep them hot. Fry the pine slices in a like amount of butter and their own juice. Pour over them a wine-glassful of brandy and serve on the browned sponge cake. Cream may be added, but it is not at all necessary.

Coffee Chestnuts.

Shell a dozen chestnuts, and boil them for five minutes, then remove the skins. Put them back in the Chafing Dish with enough fresh water to cover them, and a tablespoon of soft white sugar, boil them until they are soft. Take them out and drain them, but do not break them up. Now put in the Chafing Dish the yolk of one egg, another tablespoon of soft white sugar, half a teacup of strong black coffee, a liqueur of brandy and a tablespoon of milk or cream. Keep on stirring till just upon boiling, then pour over the chestnuts, and serve hot.

It is not requisite to add brandy or other spirits to the foregoing dishes. It certainly tends to completeness of flavour, and, especially with cooked fruits, seems to bring out a subtle aroma or bouquet, but many most estimable gourmets dispense with all spirits in cookery, and are none the less well fed. Spirits should never be given in food for the young.

A Surrey curate opened the Sunday School one day with the well-known hymn, “Little drops of water, little grains of sand.” In the middle of the first verse he stopped the singing, and complained strongly of the half-hearted manner in which it was sung. He made a fresh start. “Now then,” he shouted, “little drops of water, and for goodness sake put some spirit into it!” And he wore a blue ribbon in his buttonhole too!

I should have liked to give the full recipe for a seventeenth-century “Quelque-Shose,” according to Master Robert May’s cook-book. The ingredients read temptingly—if somewhat lavish in quantity. Forty eggs are required, which are to be made in the form of omelets, which are to be “rolled up like a wafer” and served with “white wine, sugar, and juyce of lemon.” Another recipe of the same artist was for “Pie Extraordinary, or Bride Pie, which was made of ”severall compounds, being of severall distinct pies on one bottom.” At a rough guess this may have been the forerunner of our latter-day Bride-cakes, with their superimposed layers of almond paste, and consolidated indigestion. It is always marvellous to me that there are so few sudden deaths after a wedding, particularly if the cut cake has been handed about promiscuously.

Bananas contain three times as much nourishment as meat or potatoes, and as a food are declared to be superior to bread. They are as good raw as cooked, and my only advice is to take care to buy the smaller, more delicate kinds, and to avoid the grosser plantains, which are musty and flavourless. The kind known as “Lady’s Fingers” are the best of all.

Banana Cream.

Tear off a strip of skin from each of half a dozen bananas. Put them in the Dish with a tablespoon of milk, and a sprinkle of soft sugar. Heat them up until the skins are quite brown and the fruit soft and pulpy. Then strip the skins, add some more sugar, and serve with sponge-cake fingers.

Rice Milk.

Put in the Chafing Dish a teacupful of clean boiled rice, rather more than a pint of milk, a small stick of cinnamon, and a bay leaf. Add a heaped tablespoon of soft white sugar, and a suspicion of vanilla. Boil up very slowly, and remove spices before serving.

Skansk Gröt.

There is a very good Swedish pudding, known as Skansk Gröt, which is made in the following wise: Boil in the Chafing Dish half a pound of clean rice, with the peel of a lemon, and half a stick of cinnamon, and a cup of milk. Just before it comes to the boil add four apples, sliced and cored but not peeled, and a handful of stoned raisins, a tablespoon of sifted sugar, and a wine-glass of sherry. Boil all this for eight minutes, then take out the lemon peel and the cinnamon before serving. This Skansk Gröt can be eaten hot or cold, with or without cream or milk. It is good anyway.

Stuffed Figs.

Stuff a quarter of a pound of good pulled figs with blanched almonds, split in half. Put in the Chafing Dish a tablespoon of soft white sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a wine-glass of claret. Heat this up, but do not boil. Add the figs, cover up, and cook for eight minutes, when they ought to be quite tender and ready to serve.

Whisky Apples.

Peel and core, but do not cut up, four largeish apples, not necessarily cooking ones; in fact sweet eating apples are better. Put them in the Chafing Dish with six tablespoons of soft white sugar, the rind and juice of half a lemon, and an inch stick of cinnamon, a tiny bit of vanilla, and half a tumbler of whisky. Let this simmer over a low flame for a good half-hour, till the apples are soft. When quite done put them on a hot dish and pour the sauce over them.

There is an old tradition among whist players to the effect that there are at the present moment seven hundred and fourteen Englishmen wandering in destitution upon the continent of Europe, because they would not lead trumps when they held five. I do not desire to find myself in a like case, so I have played my trumps, and must abide by the consequences. I do not propose to invent impossible sweets which I have not tested in the Chafing Dish, give them high-falutin’ titles, and palm them off on unsuspecting and all-confiding Chafing students. Let them turn inventors themselves, and my blessing go with them!

I have purposely said little or nothing on the subject of appropriate drinks to accompany Chaffinda’s efforts, because that is, to a certain extent, a personal matter. At the same time it may be useful to know that it is very easy to mature cheap claret. The trick is French, and fairly reliable. It happens sometimes that the ordinary dinner claret of commerce leaves something to be desired in the way of flavour and palatability. It may be sour, acrid, harsh, biting, vinegary, and half a dozen other things, all unpleasant. Add to a glass of such ordinary wine a teaspoonful of very hot water. The effect is usually magical. The wine seems ten years older. It becomes softer, mellower, suaver, and really almost drinkable. Le petit vin bleu du pays becomes almost a cru.

Some people drink coffee after dinner, and eke after lunch, if they have time—and lunch. Others use it as a barometer. You can do both, if you know how. It is very simple. The coffee must be very hot. Drop a lump of sugar into the cup, and before stirring it observe how the bubbles rise. If they rush towards the middle of the cup and meet, then it is going to be fine weather. If they remain close to the edge of the cup it will rain or snow. If they separate but wander about vaguely, then the weather will be changeable. This barometer is not infallible, but it has been known to be accurate. Try it. Café frequenters on the boulevards spend hours in checking the prognostications of their coffee by the weather reports in the papers.